Audio, Visual or Kinetic: A Simple Exercise to Help You Understand Your Concentration Style
People process the sensory data that their brains receive in different ways. The way you process sensory data in your brain has a lot to do with how and when you focus best. To find out how it processes data, I’d like you to try this simple three-minute exercise…
1. Take a piece of paper and divide it into three columns.
2. Title the first column seen, the second column sound, and the third column smell, taste, touch.
3. Now sit quietly for three minutes and write what you noticed during those three minutes in its corresponding column. If you hear a dog barking, for example, write dog barking in the sound column. If you see a bird fly by, write bird in the sight column, and if you start to feel uncomfortable, write uncomfortable in the smell, taste, feel, etc. column.
4. When the three minutes are up, count how many items you have in each column.
5. This exercise works best if you do it before reading on.
The types of distractions you noticed during those three minutes will indicate whether you are predominantly auditory, visual, or kinetic. And whether you’re audio, visual, or kinetic will have a lot to do with the kind of sensory data that steals your attention.
If most of your list items were in the view column, then you tend to process information visually. You are probably distracted by anything within your line of sight. But when you control what comes into your line of sight, you also control your distractions. If you’re visual, you probably can’t take your eyes off a flickering TV. Bad lighting bothers you. Clutter will most likely distract you and irritate you. And if you have more than one project on your desk, you’ll have a hard time concentrating on the project at hand. You don’t work well in front of windows, crowds, or crowded rooms. But what you can’t see won’t distract you. So when you need to focus, keep an eye on what’s in your line of sight, and you’ll have a much easier time concentrating.
If most of your list items were in the sound column, it tends to be audio. You can’t ignore the sounds. If someone asks you a question, you are obligated to answer. When you go to bed, you lie awake, listening to the sound of your own thoughts and listening to every leaky drain for miles. Noise steals your focus and concentration. When you try to focus in a noisy space, you get distracted. Libraries were made for you because once you control the sounds around you, you start to control your focus. Earplugs, closed doors, and white noise are your best defenses. By white noise, I mean any continuous sound that keeps your overly sensitive ears occupied without distracting them; continuous is the key word because if there’s a break in that noise, you’ll notice it. Some examples of white noise are: a television set to a low hum, the rattle and hum of a local coffee shop, water dripping from a fountain, the hum of an air conditioner, low chanting, your own voice drowning out other noises and soft music without lyrics. “No letters” is important because if audio people can hear words, they will start paying attention to those words. If you are audio, once you begin to control the sounds around you, you will begin to expand your focus.
Finally, if most of your list items were in the third column, it tends to be kinetic. Touch and smell are their dominant senses. Temperature extremes, poor airflow, foul odors, and tight spaces are your concentration sappers. Kinetic people benefit from controlling the space and odors around them. In fact, aromatherapy can actually help a kinetic person’s concentration by giving them something to focus on. Kinetic people also benefit from improved airflow, air conditioning, and heating systems. They’re the only type of person who should invest in comfortable desk furniture because unless kinetic people are comfortable, they won’t be able to focus on the job at hand, and the investment in their comfort will be worth it. Kinetic people only really notice what enters their personal space, so if you want to hold a kinetic person’s attention, you better be at their fingertips. If you are kinetic, controlling your personal space will expand your ability to focus.
Can you be all three guys? Well, can people be ambidextrous? Of course! And the same is true for audio, visual, and kinetic people. However, most people have a dominant sense and only notice distractions from their other senses after their dominant sense has been distracted. I’m audio, for example, and the fact that my office is cluttered, stuffy, and cluttered only seems to affect my concentration when my neighbor is playing loud music. In general, when people control the distractions of their dominant sense, the distractions of their other senses don’t bother them as much.